11 Ways To Boost Your Blog Readership

Starting a blog is an exciting venture. Whether you’re doing it to help promote your business or just as a personal enrichment activity, it’s your chance to broadcast your ideas to the world. But, as excited as you are about your posts, it will take some time before you build up a significant reader base that is also excited about your posts.

Here are eleven easy tips you can utilize to help boost your blog readership from the beginning of your online writing adventure. Follow these tactics and you’re likely to see a boost in stats in the days and weeks that follow.

1. Network

Get involved in the blogging community and network with other bloggers. If they start to mention your blog in their posts, their readers will be intrigued and will check out your blog. There are forums and special events that you can participate in to meet with the other bloggers. You can also network by reaching out to other bloggers whose blogs you respect.

2. Promote it in your email signature

Think of your email signature as a digital business card. This is where you can provide your contacts with your pertinent contact information. By including your blog URL in your signature, those who you communicate with will have easy, instant access to your site.

3. Add to forum signatures

Online forums are another fantastic place to promote your blog. There are forums about every subject, so it will be easy for you to find one or more with people who have similar interests to what are discussed in your blog. By adding it to your forum signature, your blog URL will appear in every thread in which you post. It’s a subtle way to gain readers and will look less self-promoting than just adding posts that are asking people to read your blog.

4. Give something valuable for free

No, you are not going to loose money in the process. Something valuable could be in the form of an eBook, a report, audio file, screencast etc that you made. You can offer this as a bonus to users who subscribe to your blog. This technique is usually used with an email signup tied to an autoresponder.

5. Build a landing page for subscribers

This option can go really well with the “giving something away for free” option. You can build a squeeze page whose soul purpose is to convert the visitor into a reader by giving them something valuable for free then you drive traffic to this landing page.

6. Engage your readers by encouraging commenting

It’s not only important to gain new readers but also to ensure that they will keep visiting your blog. That’s why it’s important to get them engaged.One way to engage your readers is to pose questions to them; ask them for their opinions, advice and experiences as they relate to your blog post. After all, who doesn’t love to provide others with their advice and opinions?!

7. Put it on business cards

Business cards are inexpensive and easy to have made. Business people have been publishing their website information on their business cards for years, so why not include information about a blog? Even if your blog isn’t connected directly to a business, you can have business cards made with your blog information.

8. Submit your URL to search engines

Search engines don’t automatically detect every single website that is ever created. Sometimes you need to speed up the cataloging process by submitting your URL to the search engines. The popular engines often will have a “submit” link that you can utilize to add your blog. Keep in mind, just because you submit your URL doesn’t mean it’s going to appear on the first page of results. Nonetheless, getting your blog listed with Google, Yahoo, and the likes, is a great first step.

9. Utilize tags

Once you have your blog listed with the search engines, tags will help ensure that it appears more frequently in search results. With each posting, pick three to five main subjects to tag. The tags that are often most searched are people’s names.

10. Set up an RSS feed

Readers who utilize your feed will easily be able to access your new posts as they are published. This is a great tool to retain your current readership! If you use WordPress as your blogging platform then you get this by default.

11. Make it easy to subscribe

Offer an email subscription option as well as the RSS subscription. Some readers just like the good old email subscription method. Make sure the subscription option is easily visible to your site’s visitors (some people have a tendency to go out of their way to make it hard to find).

I am sure I haven’t covered all the easy ways to boost your blog readership techniques so please feel free to share your tips in the comment area below.

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9 Ways to Generate Insane Blog Traffic in 2014

If you have a blog in 2014, then you probably understand the necessity of traffic.  No traffic means no leads. No leads means less sales. (And we like sales.) 

So, to help with your traffic generation efforts, I have compiled a list a 9 techniques Flight Media used to grow it’s blog traffic more than 1,200% in the first 14 days of 2014.

1. Write 1 Article Per Day

Yes, I know this is the ‘oldest trick in the book,’ but it is for a good reason– it works. 

It sounds easy at first, but by day 7, writers block tends to creep in and takeover your mind. (Here’s how to break it)

Our New Years Resolution (like every other blogger,) was to begin blogging daily. January 2nd, we started and were able to grow our traffic 1,200% in the first 14 days.

And that’s just our story.

Neil Patel created 3 blogs that each receive more than 100,000 visitors per month, Jeff Bullas blogged 5 times per week and grew his traffic to more than 300,000 monthly visitors, and Michael Dunlop created 6 blogs that each get more than 100,000 visitors per by blogging.

2. Tweet For Your Life

Of course, sharing your content on social media is a given, but Twitter, in particularly, will usually generate the most traffic.

Why? Because you can post up to 50 times per day on Twitter and still gain followers. Any other social network site will lose you followers with such high-frequency posting.

In fact, nearly 40% of Flight Media’s traffic comes from Twitter because we currently grow every team member’s Twitter followers and we tweet 6-11 times per day. Posting that many times per day, along with growing your following will generate massive traffic.

Click here to learn how we do it..

Remember: For Twitter, you want to keep a good ratio of what you post. We recommend 20% of your own content, 30% inspirational quotes, 40% of other people’s content, and 10% promotional (i.e Free Offers, Discounts, Services, etc.) Nobody likes to listen to people talk about themselves, so share other people’s content and inspirational quotes to spark interaction and get noticed by the owners of the content you share.

3. Write About People In Your Industry

Along with writing daily, a good way to generate a glorious amount of traffic is by writing a list about people in your industry.

We do this because we like to associate ourselves with the names of these industry leaders, so when people are searching for them in Google, our posts have the chance of coming up.

On top of that, if the ‘listed people’ notice, they often times are flattered and share your post. We actually did this on Flight Drummer’s Magazine several times and received more than 1.9k shares on some of the articles. (Like this one)

We also recently did it with “11 Business Bloggers You Should Be Following.”

So, to get you started, you could write posts like:

• 11 Young Entrepreneurs You Should Be Following
• 11 Business Bloggers You Should Be Following
• 20 Women Entrepreneurs That Rock
• 20 Blogs You Should Be Reading
• you get my drift..

Typically, after we write an article like this, we will email each person we blogged about and let them know how inspiring they are to us. Most of the people have several hundred thousand followers, so if you get just one to share the post, you’ll get hundreds of social shares.

Cakework.

4. Make Your Blog Sexy

The problem I see with a lot of blogs is bad web design. This is vital because, although it doesn’t necessarily generate new traffic, blog layout and design does have an effect on returning traffic.

You don’t even have to be a Web Developer to find some great plugins to make your blog look better, so the more effort you put into creating an attractive website, the more people will want to return.

In fact, Flight Media Blog is built on this WordPress template and uses tons of free plugins.

5. Write Funny Content

While it’s important to provide factual, results-driven content on a blog to position yourself as an expert, it’s also good to provide valuable entertainment.

Your readers are not robots, so they do like to laugh every now and again–especially if it’s industry relevant and they can relate.

This could include “__ Signs You’re a _____” or “Confessions of a _____” kinds of posts. (ex:”40 Signs You’re a Marketing Nerd” or “Confessions of a Content Marketer.”)

These types of posts display your expertise on the subject, as well as give readers a good ole’ laugh out loud. (Very shareable, too.)

6. Comment on Other Blogs

“Yeah, yeah, I know. I need to build back-links.“

No, this isn’t for back-links.

Blog commenting is a huge interaction generator. Typically, when you comment on somebody’s blog, they will visit yours and comment back.

If you’re looking to receive more comments on your blog, search for relevant articles and comment on them. We found that you will receive 40-50% of comments back from blogs you comment on.

This is important because nobody likes to be the first comment on your blog. If people see other people commenting, they are more prone to leave a comment. By commenting on someone else’s blog, it makes it easier for them to return the favor–regardless of how many comments you currently have.

(This creates an interactive community, which can turn into sales.)

7. Guest Blog

Another ‘old trick in the book.’

(If you aren’t familiar with guest blogging or how it can generate more than 60,000 visits, read this.)

Not only does guest blogging improve traffic, but it creates a reputation. The more guest blogs you have out there, the more credible you become in the blogosphere.

On top of that, it also makes it easier to get more guest blogging gigs. For example, if you’ve had guest blogs published on Jeff Bullas, The Huffington Post, and Life Hacker, then it will be easier to get your guest blog posted on other websites within that niche.

8. Participate In Forums

A while back, when I was involved heavily in the internet marketing business, I would participate in the Warrior Forum and receive 150-200 visits per dayfrom my signature that linked to my blog at the bottom of every post I made.

Although this is becoming more difficult to do because Forums like Yahoo Answers and Quora don’t allow footer signatures , it can still be done if approached correctly.

The goal of forum marketing is to position yourself as an expert.

You need to join a relevant forum, created an awesome bio, and then begin answering questions people have that are relevant to your industry. The more questions you answer, the more reputation you establish, and the more people will click into your bio and contact you for help.

Side-note: this takes some time, so I would recommend mastering the previous 7 tactics before diving head first into this. Blogging daily will even help you accomplish this better by expanding your knowledge base.

9. Email Your List

Finally, the the easiest and most obvious step!

After you post an article, it’s important to make sure it gets sent to your email subscribers in your next broadcast. It’s much easier to get subscribers to read and share your content, than new visitors who have never heard of you.

Seeing as subscribers are more likely to share your content, it will also create quick social proof that your content rocks, and more people will share it. (People like to jump on the bandwagon)

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10 Quick Ways to Increase Your Ads' Clickthrough Rates

In his book Ultimate Guide to Pay-Per-Click Advertising, internet marketing expert Richard Stokes helps you master advanced search engine strategies from top search engine marketers to increase your sales. In this edited excerpt, the author the best tactics you can use for creating ads that get the most clicks from viewers.

Search ads are short. You have only the following to work with:

• Headlines that contain 25 characters
• Two lines of copy that contain 35 characters each (70 characters total)
• A display URL (which doesn't have to match the clickthrough URL).

To succeed, you must be concise. But there are plenty of other rules you can follow to write more effective ads.

In late 2012, AdGooroo analyzed 20 million paid search ads appearing in the United States to identify best practices you should follow when writing your copy. The top 10 findings are below. Please be aware that a specific rule may or may not work in every situation. Always split test when changing your ad copy!

1. Use "www" in your domain name. Your domain name is found at the end of every paid search ad. You can use either the long form with a preceding "www" (for instance, "www.adgooroo.com") or a short form that omits the prefix ("adgooroo.com").

The longer version was found to increase clickthrough rate by nearly 16 percent.

2. Avoid numbers. Many paid search ads contain at least one number. For instance:

50th birthday gift ideas
A free service to help you find
creative 50th Birthday Gifts.

Or "buy" ads, like:

Save 45% On Abrasives
Grind & Cut Wheels, Discs, Belts
Quality Same Day Ship on Stock Items

This is a widely recommended practice. However, data suggests that it doesn't work for most advertisers. Ads with no numbers performed nearly 20 percent better than those with them.

3. Avoid exclamation points. Another practice many advertisers follow is to include exclamation points in their ad copy. For instance:

Facilitate this! 
Effective and dynamic meeting
facilitation and skills training

Ads with exclamation points were found to perform nine percent worse than ads without.

4. Avoid overused call-to-action phrases. When writing new ads, it's often a good idea to test a call-to-action, such as "Buy now," "Try now" or "Download now." However, Google frowns on certain terms, so this tactic isn't nearly as effective as it was a few years ago. Ads with the word "now" in them actually underperformed all other ads by seven percent.

Here are some other common call-to-action phrases you might try testing in your ads:

• Get official quote
• Shop and save
• Learn more today
• Get tips
• Order today for quick delivery
• Request info
• Read this

5. Offer something for free.  Including the word "free" still seems to work like a charm. Ads with this word performed nine percent better than ads without.

6. Save space with ampersands. Space is tight with paid search ads, so anytime you can save a character or two, it's welcome news. The ampersand (&) not only works well for this, but it also increases the average advertiser's clickthrough rate by eight percent.

7. Don't include the price. Many search marketers include the price in their ad copy assuming that by doing so, they'll avoid unnecessary clicks from those who are looking for either a higher or lower price offering. While this does work (and will save you money), it will also lower your clickthrough rate by a whopping 17 percent, ensuring you get hit with a quality score penalty.

8. Be the "official" site. Although Google has quietly eliminated most affiliates from its advertiser list, some advertisers are still using "official site" in their ad copy. Take a look at these examples:  

Shop For iPod Nano
Official Site. Free Shipping on orders
$24 & up or pick up in store

Tiffany & Co. (Official)
Shop the Official Tiffany & Co. site
for exclusive Tiffany designs.

Using it seems to make a big difference. On average, "official" ads have a 71 percent higher clickthrough rate.

9. Incorporate trademark symbols. Trademark symbols (™, ©, ®) may be required only for legal reasons, but they can dramatically boost your paid search results. These unusual characters improved clickthrough rates by nearly 90 percent!

10. Use all the space you're allowed. Sometimes you might not need a lot of space to say what you've got to say. Take a look at this pithy ad:

Books 
Buy a book
Read and become smarter
www.books.com

Other advertisers try to be cute with their ads:

Postcards 
No way!
Can't be true?
www.postcardsrus.com

Avoid this tactic, and use as much of the available space in your ad as you can. On average, longer ads have a 64 percent higher clickthrough rate.

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Website Traffic Generation: Practical Secrets To Getting A Lot Of Traffic

Nothing is new under the sun. Nothing is new in website traffic generation.

There’s no traffic generation strategy that one can claim as a “new breakthrough” that someone else hasn’t used years ago. That’s just the way it is.

So where does it leave us?

We need to learn how to use what we have to the fullest, and that’s what this post is all about.

Website Traffic Generation Secret #1: “Diversification“

You and I chose to build a business in an immature online world.

Why is it immature?

Take direct mail marketing, for instance. It’s been tested and proven and it works. If you can make it work for your business, you are as good as golden.

Online marketing, however, never stands still. It constantly changes and evolves, keeping us all on our toes, to say the least.

Remember what happened with Adwords? A few changes sent thousands of businesses down the drain; all because they chosen to put all their eggs in one basket.

I don’t know about you, but I want to sleep well at night – whenever I get to sleep, that is.

So I make a point to use as MANY website traffic generation ways as possible: 20-30 different sources at a time.

If any one of these traffic sources goes away for any reason, sure it might hurt a little, but my business will keep running.

Don’t ever think that this one brand NEW website traffic generation source will become the KEY to your future wealth.

Website Traffic Generation Secret #2: “Systemization”

So now that you have 10 or more unique traffic sources bringing you new visitors daily like clockwork, how do you keep track of it all?

Here are 3 simple steps I use to make sense of it all; start with one traffic source at a time:

1.   Study: study the new website traffic generation strategy from a trusted authority on the subject, i.e. online course, ebook, training software, etc. Then put what you learned in theory into practice. After all, you’ll never know it works until you try it.

See what I use to master traffic generation:

• Best Internet Marketing Tools Best Marketers Use

2.   Master: now that you know the new strategy works, you need to test it, tweak it, work on it until it becomes profitable. By “profitable” I mean until you can make one cent more than what you put into it.

3.   Autopilot: once you are making one more cent than you invest into it, you need to figure out how to put this strategy on autopilot. That might mean getting automated software or outsourcing the task altogether.

After you complete all three steps, all you need to do is monitor the progress and more on to the next strategy.

Overtime, your sources will continue to grow and your business will start working as a well-oiled machine.

But remember, it all starts with ONE strategy and 3 simple steps to follow to make it work for you.

Website Traffic Generation Secret #3: “Set Goals”

If I were to ask you “What is your purpose of driving traffic to your website?”, would you be able to give me a clear and definite answer?

Let’s dig a bit deeper on this one.

When new visitors come to your website, what do you want them to do?

Subscribe to your RSS feed?

Opt in to your email list?

Check out the affiliate products you offer?

Buy into a membership site you have?

Whatever your goals are, you need to make sure you focus on ONE of them at a time and drive your traffic to fulfill that one specific goal.

Traffic that doesn’t take ACTION is useless and it’s your job to make sure you work on yourtraffic conversion goals even BEFORE you start driving traffic to your site.

Website Traffic Generation Secret #4: “Track Everything”

I am sure we are talking about something you already know here.

However, you and I both know that there’s a vast difference between knowing and doing.

Tracking your website traffic generation may be your single most money and time saving habit you can acquire.

I am often asked what is my single best secret to traffic generation, as if I were hiding something and as if there were such a thing.

The biggest secret here is you test everything until you find the BEST website traffic generation secret that works for YOU and YOUR business.

One size doesn’t fit all when it comes down to traffic.

Marketing Takeaway

You can’t play an NFL football team, unless you are one yourself.

You can’t create a successful business without knowing the basics.

And what you just read are the basics of website traffic generation. Period.

But I wont’ leave you hanging here, you know that. For the rest of this week, we’ll be learning more about some “less traveled” traffic generation strategies and how to apply them to your business, so STAY TUNED!

Love it or hate it? Comment to show me that you’re alive!

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5 Reasons You Are Not Getting Website Traffic

It has become critical for all businesses to have a thriving online presence, and, for businesses who conduct themselves exclusively online, driving traffic to your website is the lifeblood on which your livelihood depends for survival. Many business owners struggle with figuring out which strategies for marketing and driving traffic to your website are the most dependable and will yield long-term results that will sustain their business for the future. In my many years of experience in building successful online companies and helping other business owners build their own online presence, I have tested and perfected the most dependable and sustainable marketing strategies for creating a successful online presence. Below, I am about to share with you how to implement the strategies that have brought me the greatest success.

1. SEO (Search Engine Optimization) Compliance -- Due to the radically changing nature of the search engine algorithms, it is likely that your website has either fallen out of current standards or never was in compliance. Most website designers and programmers "think" they understand search engines, but most of them design websites for display and often miss the vital components to achieve search engine recognition and placement. While it is critical to develop a website for usability and high visitor retention, it's also important to structure and engineer your website with search engines in mind. Elements like the internal navigation, content organization, content quality and image uniqueness and originality are major factors the search engines consider when measuring a website's trust and relevance for a given search query. Furthermore, they are also checking for elements that indicate a website can be trusted. For example, business contact information, privacy policies, terms and conditions and overall visitor safety are factors they consider -- because, after all, they have a challenging task of serving not only the highest quality, but "trusted" resources on the web for a given search.

2. Social Media Optimization -- Social platforms are a widely used and embraced medium for sharing information and resources. While most people don't actively seek business resources and services through social media, many businesses are successfully capitalizing on these mediums for gaining website visitors. Establishing social media presence for a brand is a very important initiative for many businesses largely because their competitors have a presence, but also because most consumers now review a company's social media presence before deciding to contact or do business with them. Because social media platforms contain every type of demographic imaginable, it is critical to determine the exact demographic of your ideal customer, visitor or fan and formulate a social media marketing strategy that specifically targets that user community. There are many resources available for paid social media advertising and promotion, and most social media sites (at least the major ones) support paid placement of ads that can drive a huge amount of qualified visitors to a website or offer.

3. Paid Search Marketing (PPC, Pay-Per-Click, CPM) -- Search engines offer paid placement for businesses who need to capture an audience quickly. Google and the Adwords platform is one of many that allow you to created targeted advertisements to be displayed for specific searches performed on the search engine portal. Bing provides the Bing Ad Center which is basically a clone of the Adwords platform and serves ads to both Bing and Yahoo search engine users. These platforms allow anyone to create advertising campaigns and can be extremely powerful, but they can also be a waste of valuable advertising dollars if the campaigns are not budgeted, optimized and targeted correctly. Most businesses do not correctly choose keywords that will grow their business and craft advertisements ad copy that doesn't convert. Match that with poor targeting, and you have a failing advertising campaign that drains the marketing budget, and it results in zero or very few qualified visitors to a website.

4. Lack of Clarity/Focus/Precision in Digital Marketing Priorities -- Most companies make the incorrect assumption that they should be using all mediums for driving traffic. More often than not, only a couple of mediums for online marketing makes sense for a business. For example, social media might be a great platform for a musician looking to promote new music, but an accountant might not get great results. Establishing very clear goals and doing so with a professional that has a history of running successful digital marketing campaigns for a variety of businesses would be a good place to start. Without precision in your online marketing efforts and isolated, tightly controlled, monitored and measured campaigns, you're likely to waste money on advertising that doesn't work, or you just plain never get any results.

5. Maybe You Have Traffic, But No Sales -- Sometimes a website will have great visitor traffic, but nobody seems to be calling, buying or signing up for anything. Savvy internet users (and that's most people nowadays) expect a lot from a website or business. People are conditioned by reflex to avoid giving you their time, attention and, especially, their email address or money. Your website needs a swath of essential ingredients in order to persuade people to do business with you let alone stay on your website. Without knowing what these web design and aesthetic elements are, it's rather difficult to understand what the critical factors are that keep people on a website vs. cause them to leave.

Most websites are plagued with problems (unseen by the average web designer or marketer) that result in people not trusting the site or business behind it. Sometimes, it's a matter of the website "missing" critical elements that increase trust, build rapport and persuade people to take the next step. Working with an experienced professional in website conversion optimization is highly recommended so that they can bring their experience in testing various site conversion elements to the equation while you worry about running your business. After all, your website should be powering your success, increasing sales and customers, not limiting or holding you back from your goals.

By keeping these five ideas in mind and implementing one or more of them, you are significantly putting yourself ahead of much of your online competition and greatly increasing your chances of success.

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